Jihadis are like Nazis, says Tory leadership hopeful

This is a very interesting article. David Cameron, a member of the British Tory party compares Jihadists with the Nazis. It's a good comparison and it makes sense. A little historical tidbit: after WWII, the Nazi SS scattered and made their new goal, the destruction of Israel. Some of these SS elite went to various Arab countries and helped form the current ruling governments. I always wonder what role that has on today's problems?


A Tory leadership contender today likened Islamic extremists who justify violence by the concept of a holy war to the ideology of Hitler in the 1930s. David Cameron said that a strain of Islamist thinking developed during the last century "which, like other totalitarianisms, such as Nazism and Communism, offers its followers a form of redemption through violence". Mr Cameron, in a speech to the Foreign Policy Centre in London, said that after the Arab world declined in power and prestige, some Islamic thinkers had argued that the reason was because it had abandoned true Islam. Some, including Osama bin Laden, argued for a jihad (holy war) to "purge" the Arab world.

He said that it would be a huge mistake to bow to the pressure from a violent minority, or to believe that the jihadists' desire for blood would be assuaged by, for example, Britain withdrawing from Iraq. He said: "Jihadism, like Nazism and Communism before it, often bewitches the minds of gifted and educated young men. Just like the Nazis of 1930s Germany, they want to purge corrupt cosmopolitan influences. "The parallels with the rise of Nazism go further. Just as there were figures in the 1930s who misunderstood the totalitarian wickedness of Nazism and argued that Hitler had a rational set of limited political demands, so there are people today who try to explain Jihadist violence with reference to a limited set of political goals.

"If only, some argue, we withdrew from Iraq, or Israel made massive concessions, then we would assuage Jihadist anger. That argument, while often advanced by well-meaning people, is as limited as the belief in the Thirties that, by allowing Germany to remilitarise the Rhineland or take over the Sudetenland, we would satisfy Nazi ambitions. "As we discovered in the 1930s, a willingness to cede ground and duck confrontation is interpreted as fatal weakness. It can provide an incentive to escalate the struggle against a foe who clearly lacks the stomach for the fight. Indeed, in the 1990s the inaction of the West fed the belief among Osama bin Laden and his allies that we lacked the strength to defend ourselves." Mr Cameron added: "The lesson from all of this with respect to our presence in Iraq is clear. Premature withdrawal - and failure to support the Iraqi authority - would be seen as a surrender to militant jihadism. Nothing would embolden the terrorists more."

Mr Cameron is currently the Tory spokesman on education. In his speech on terrorism and homeland security today, he said that shared British values could be summed up as "freedom under the rule of law". He called for a number of reforms to protect British freedoms, including: a dedicated UK border police force; withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights; a special commission to investigate the July 7 bombings; more resources for MI5; encouraging every citizen to learn English; ensuring that the national curriculum was enforced in faith schools, with lessons conducted in English; a Mosque Commission, led by Muslims, to "provide proper regulatory oversight" of mosques. [org pub Times Online, by Jenny Booth]